Procrastinations and Pie

Lovely Readers,

I spent an hour and a half working on one paragraph last night. That was one messed up paragraph! Granted, I was also distracted by Entertainment Tonight (yes, I have the TV on while I write...don't judge). But still, regardless of the paragraph's faults and Madonna's supposed divorce, I think and hour and a half pushes this beyond "polishing" and more in the realm of "procrastination." I also procrastinated a few other ways last night: insisted on making a Jell-O Dream Pie that neither Dave nor I ended up eating, reorganized my mixing bowls, and spent some frustrated time searching for my pie iron cookbook. Despite all these unnecessary distractions, after the paragraph hump I did manage to polish three chapters. Go me!



A little about my self-imposed timeline. HP is divided into thirds. I have been revising, polishing, and repolishing the first third for about 5 months now. Why? It's hard. Some big-time revising needed to take place, including reordering chapters, rewriting the entire first chapter, adding scenes, deleting other scenes, and changing some significant details (all based on the feedback I received on the first draft -- thank you readers!). The first third of the book simply bears the brunt of these major revisions. That's my official line. But the real reason is the middle section of the novel...well, it scares me. There's a ghost. I thought I knew how to write about ghosts. But I kind of don't. So now that the first third is almost finished (only one more chapter and I'm done!), that means I have to confront this ghost, who points her finger at me and laughs: "you have no idea how to write about me, do you?" I look away and nod, sheepishly. Certainly delaying this confrontation makes some sense now. And if anyone wants some Jell-O Dream Pie....you know where to find me.